{"id":12099,"date":"2017-06-06T03:15:04","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T09:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/?p=12099"},"modified":"2019-08-04T00:38:41","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T06:38:41","slug":"starving-for-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/starving-for-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Starving for Company"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meeting me was a sickening nightmare. I didn’t take it personally, because for Kylie meeting anyone<\/em> felt like that.<\/p>\n

But she had determined to see me because “something had to change.” But what exactly?<\/p>\n

More than just shyness, social phobia causes panic. Meetings and minglings with others can feel like a brush with death itself. And it gets worse.<\/p>\n

Even just thinking<\/em> about upcoming social events can whip up painful and bewildering feelings. Overcome with feelings of failure and helplessness, Kylie described a pounding heart, dry mouth, shaky voice, rapid breathing, sweating, blushing, an upset stomach and a torrent of self-torment.<\/p>\n

“Meeting new people is the worst, but even seeing old friends for the first time in a while can make me panic”, she told me.<\/p>\n

No wonder it can feel easier just to become isolated! And maybe that wouldn’t matter, if it weren’t for one thing.<\/p>\n

We need<\/em><\/a> to feel connected to others. To be accepted by the group is to feel safer and more secure, and to have access to greater resources, perspectives and beneficial connections. You might argue that it shouldn’t<\/em> be like this, but the fact is, it is. We all need people, and we all need to be needed by people.<\/p>\n

As we evolved in a world of bigger, faster and sharper-toothed predators, we found there was safety in numbers. Whether or not we were accepted by the group could literally mean the difference between life and death.<\/p>\n

And for those too sensitively attuned to social rejection, it can still feel<\/em> like death. That’s exactly how it felt for Kylie. Social anxiety is often the manifestation of a terrible fear of being not<\/em> accepted, or even actively rejected, cast out into the bleak and unforgiving wilderness.<\/p>\n

But isolation is no solution.<\/p>\n

Kylie had become so lonely. Thirty-seven years old and alone, she told me bitterly how friends had eventually dropped away as she’d continually avoided their calls and left their increasingly infrequent messages unreturned. Opportunities for intimacy, love, friendship, laughter, support and connection had been squandered, left to wither and die.<\/p>\n

Kylie was starving for company but couldn’t face taking the very nutrition that would give her life meaning. In our first meeting she told me, “I feel like there’s this world outside that I can’t join in. But I need to so much.” Indeed, we all need to join in, to connect, because nothing matters more than relationships, at least for most of us.<\/p>\n

Relationships: The juice of life<\/h3>\n

Money can’t buy you happiness (although research shows that earning a certain amount can help lift it to some extent)1<\/sup>. But above and beyond basic material provision, our relationships really do matter.<\/p>\n

Loneliness seems to be a killer. Weak social connections have been shown to be as harmful to health as smoking, lack of exercise, obesity and overindulgence in alcohol.2<\/sup> Conversely, social connectivity seems to be a life-saving, meaning-making, happiness-producing, central part of our existence.3<\/sup> We are wired to connect.<\/p>\n

But what if the very thing we need is the very thing we are terrified of? Kylie had always been shy. The problem was that despite coming to see me she had become depressingly fatalistic about the inevitability of spending an empty life devoid of friends.<\/p>\n

I had to do something about that particular limiting belief.<\/p>\n

Being scared is just who I am!<\/h3>\n

We all have varying natural personalities. Some people are naturally more prone to introversion and self-sufficiency; others feel they need to be around people constantly.<\/p>\n

But we all have some crossover as far as personality type is concerned. We are learning machines, and we have a lot of adaptability or ‘wiggle room’ within<\/em> our basic personality types. This means that a person who is prone to introversion can adapt and become able to operate in a way that is more extroverted but still fits their reflective personality.<\/p>\n

When Kylie told me, “I guess being scared of people is just who I am!” I reassured her that we can all modify who we are. I kept mentioning ‘wiggle room’ and epigenetics4<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n

First I wanted her to have hope she could feel okay<\/em>, then we could move onto the possibility that, just sometimes, she could even feel great<\/em> in social situations. That she could, and would, connect with people.<\/p>\n

I told her that I had been naturally shy and introverted myself, and I still had some of that. But I had been able to learn and practise social confidence until it became a developed part of who I am. I told Kylie I would help her do it too. Like everything, articulation and communication get better with practice.<\/p>\n

First, though, we had to deal with the terror \u2013 not just shyness, but absolute panic \u2013 she would feel when trying to connect with others.<\/p>\n

But how?<\/p>\n

1. Help your client take control<\/h3>\n

Few people think of worrying as self-programming, but it is. Intense worry about upcoming social situations repeatedly furrows an association between the idea of meeting people with the experience of feeling terrified.<\/p>\n

Sound a bell to a dog while it’s being fed enough times and pretty soon the association between the bell noise and salivation will become automatically<\/em> established through associative programming<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But it’s not just dogs that fall prey to this phenomenon. If every time I ever think about going out to meet people I feel terrified, pretty soon I too will be programmed with an automatic<\/em> association between stimulus and response.<\/p>\n

Kylie recognized this. “Before I have to meet someone, if I really can’t get out of it, I will worry about it for weeks beforehand. Every time I think about it I feel sick with worry!” I suggested to Kylie that this was a kind of uncontrolled mental preparation, a self-hypnosis, that was preparing her mind and body to respond in a way that she really didn’t want.<\/p>\n

I also told her this: “You can start to reverse this trend by taking time to think about the future situation while relaxed.” This made sense to Kylie and helped her realize that she might have more control over her own responses than she had been assuming. I helped her relax deeply through hypnosis there and then.<\/p>\n

I then asked her to watch in her mind an upcoming work-related social situation she’d been dreading, but to watch herself in that future time through the medium of deep calm. As she inwardly viewed this upcoming event in a new way, I noticed a smile creep onto her lips.<\/p>\n

I encouraged her to see herself looking calm and natural, even enjoying herself in this upcoming time. I taught her self-hypnosis and asked her to take control and practise this every day until the social event. She did, and found with intense happiness that she did<\/em> feel good in the situation when it came around.<\/p>\n

The memory of that<\/em> good event became a springboard, or, to mash metaphors, a template for other future events.<\/p>\n

We also took the charge out of some horrible memories of social terror so that those memories would no longer bother her.<\/p>\n

So the takeaway here is: Anxious people already inadvertently prepare by repeatedly imagining upcoming situations in conjunction<\/em> with anxious feelings. The more they do this, the more they build up an association between feeling fearful and the situation.<\/p>\n

We can explain this to clients and teach them to do the opposite so that their body and mind forge a new and better automatic association with these times. This will increase their sense of control and confidence.<\/p>\n

\r\n \t\t\t\r\n \t\t\tHelp socially phobic clients form better automatic associations with stressful times\r\n \t\t\t<\/span>\r\n \t\t\tClick to Tweet<\/span><\/path><\/svg><\/i>\r\n \t\t<\/div>\n

2. Get your client to start looking<\/h3>\n

Socially anxious people focus inwards, on their feelings. Studies have found that people who rate themselves as shy in social settings have much worse recall of external details of the environment because they’ve been looking inward, not outward.5<\/sup> Fear makes us self-absorbed, and I mean this in a descriptive, not a judgemental way.<\/p>\n

You might be telling me an amazing story of your recent trip to Bognor Regis (or wherever), but I am focusing on my<\/em> heart rate, or the feeling in my<\/em> stomach, or what you must be thinking of me.<\/em> I’m not really seeing you at all \u2013 I’m seeing myself<\/em> through your eyes.<\/p>\n

I asked Kylie to go to her local store, a situation that normally made her anxious because the friendly old man behind the counter always chatted to her. I asked her to, this time, make a mental note of three aspects of the external situation, such as:<\/p>\n